Nanking
by ProcrastinatingPalindrome
Summary: China and Japan try to come to terms with the past.


AN: First, I'd like to make it clear that I have no problem with Japan or China. They are both wonderful countries and I have nothing against either. While the Japanese Imperial Army did some terrible things, this does not mean that Japan or the Japanese are bad. I tried to get into the feelings of the characters, which means they sometimes say some really nasty and/or racist things. These are NOT my opinions. With a sensitive topic like this, I thought I'd just make that clear from the get go. Okay, on with the story.

China ached. His body was covered in scars, many layered on top of older ones. The oldest had disappeared, forgotten even by his own skin, but the younger ones still cut ragged lines across his flesh. Nanking was a young scar, not even half a century old yet, and it throbbed now. It was all Japan's fault; he had woken up this pain, dragged all the memories back to the surface.

"That's it? _That's_ your apology?" he snarled at Japan, gripping the edge of the table to keep his hands steady. The younger nation was still bent in a slight bow, his eyes locked on the floor. "You come here and say that what happened at Nanking was unfortunate and regrettable, as though you had nothing to do with it. How dare you mock me like this!"

Still Japan didn't look up. He was barely bowing his head at all. It was as though he was apologizing for breaking a vase. China wanted to strike him. Japan had allowed his men to murder, to _butcher_ thousands upon thousands...and worse. China had known for millennia that there were far worse things you could do to a person than simply kill them, but Nanking had carved that knowledge into his heart.

"You ought to be on your knees." It was difficult to spit the words out past the fury that tightened his throat. His breath was coming in sharp bursts now. "You ought to weep and apologize with all your heart for everything you've done. Instead you come here and offer this halfhearted apology...you won't even admit what you did!"

"What do you want me to say?" Japan's voice, almost inaudible, barely more than a whisper, caught China off guard. He floundered for a moment, losing his place in his tirade before finding his voice again.

"You should at least come clean about what you've done. In the very least tell me plainly, without making excuses or trying to justify your actions, that you let your men kill and rape hundreds of thousands-"

"It wasn't that many-"

"Still you try to trivialize your crime!"

"No! I'm not-"

"You are! I know you, you love to play the victim. You expect pity for all your tragedies, but you can't even manage a simple, honest apology! Not even for _me! _You're disgusting! You...you deserved all that's happened to you! You deserved the atom bombs!"

He didn't mean it, he didn't truly mean it, and he regretted those words even as they were leaving his mouth. The silence that followed rang in both men's ears. He could try to take those words back, but the anger was still burning in his stomach, and he turned away quickly.

"Get out. You're only making trouble for me."

"China-"

"_I said get out!_" His voice cracked, but hopefully Japan would think it was only in anger. He kept his back to the country he used to think of as a brother until he heard the retreating footsteps and the door closing behind him. Only then did he allow himself to slump back into the chair behind his desk again.

Why couldn't Japan understand? Did he expect China to just forget all that had happened, that time would wash away the past? No, surely he was old enough to know how memories cling and linger, like bugs caught in a spider's web. Perhaps he honestly felt no remorse for his crimes. It hurt to think that might be true.

Once, centuries ago, Japan had cared for him. China was sure of that. He used smile at his brother country when the elder would gush over how cute the pandas were. He used to stifle a laugh behind his hands when China had a smudge of ink on his face after their calligraphy lessons. He used to come running to China, holding out his swollen hand where a bee had stung him, fat tears welling in his eyes. When had all that changed? It didn't matter; that Japan was gone now. The current one could apparently hurt his former brother without a hint of guilt. The current Japan could do such horrible things, such unimaginable things.

The memory of Nanking bobbed to the surface of his mind, dragging China back to those six weeks he dearly wished he could forget...

_The pain of Nanking filled up China's mind. The city would have hurt even from a great distance, but being in the center of the city as it fell into chaos was overwhelming. Many of the details blurred together in his mind, as though he was avoiding looking at any one horror too long out of self defense. The bodies piled up everywhere, and the streets looked as though the heavens had been raining blood. Fear ran through the entire city, wild and electric. _

_He could remember the Safety Zone a little better, with the crowded, frightened refugees, the meager portions of food they received that grew smaller and smaller, and the horrible sounds that came from beyond their walls. _

_He remembered John Rabe too. He couldn't understand the German at first, why he insisted on helping to set up the Safety Zone, why he put his life at risk time and again for a people that were not his own. He was wary at first, excepting still more betrayal, but it never came. "I can't abandon them," Rabe had said, and after a while China started to believe. _

_He forbade China to leave the Safety Zone, once he discovered what China was. Rabe wanted to protect the Chinese, and that meant protecting China too. Japan had been spreading posters around then, assuring the refugees that it was safe to go home again, to leave the protection that Rabe tried offer them. Japan promised food too, for those who left the Safety Zone. China was too old to fall for such a lie, but his people were hungry and weary, eager to cling to any sign of hope. More and more took their chances and ventured outside. China heard them screaming later. _

_For then, China stayed back in the Safety Zone, safe for a moment, but for how long? How long would Japan respect the wishes of a tiny group of Westerners who insisted that the few miles they had designated were a nonviolence zone? It still wasn't safe from stray soldiers that crawled over their walls, and bombs from time to time, but it was always better than being exposed out on the streets. There was nothing to protect you out there...but Rabe tried to save those outside their walls too. _

_He would drive out in his car and come back with more refugees, many wounded, most in tears, all terrified and praising that strange German man as their savior. Once he came back with a small bundle in the seat of his car, wrapped up tightly in his coat. China approached slowly, looking back and forth between the bundle and the dark expression on Rabe's face. Cautiously, he peeled back the edge of the coat to see the dark hair of a little girl...and her naked back. Something twisted horribly in his stomach. _

"_Did...was she..." His breath was suddenly gone. _

"_Not now," Rabe said firmly, lifting the child away from China's hands and walking in quick, long strides towards the hospital. _

_China settled down by the low fire and tried not to think. Rabe returned after a spell, and sat down silently next to China. _

"_Her left eye was badly wounded, and I believe her arm is broken," he explained without preamble. "I don't believe either injury is too serious, but I wanted Dr. Wilson to take a look at her anyway." He rubbed his forehead wearily and sighed. "Though it will probably be a long time before she's treated...he's the only surgeon we have left now." _

_Another question, one China couldn't bring himself to ask, hung silently in the air._

"_I got to her before they could hurt her...too much," Rabe said softly. "They ripped her clothes off, but I don't think they...actually touched her, not before I arrived. They ran away after seeing my armband."_

_He laughed humorlessly and he ran his fingers over the swastika on his arm._

"_Her family...?" China asked after a pause._

"_No, she was the only one I could bring back...another man was there, possibly her father, but he was tied up and the soldiers drug him away when they ran. I think they...they were going to make him watch." _

_China had heard this story before, far too often, but it still made him burn, and he was on his feet before he knew it. Rabe was suddenly grabbing his shoulders, trying to force him back down._

"_Stop, stop Herr China! Calm down, sit-"_

"_You come into my land and presume to give me orders-!"_

"_They'll kill you if you go outside-"_

"_They're my people!" China finally bellowed. Nanking had weakened him, and he was finding it difficult to keep struggling against the German. _

"_And you can't help them now!" _

_The strength abruptly went out of him, and Rabe had to shift his grip on the country to keep him upright. He was tired, so tired, too tired to even weep for his poor people._

China shook his head, trying to clear the memories away. He reached around and left his fingers brush against Nanking on his back. Even now, the wound was still so tender. Maybe it would always be that way, a constant reminded of what had happened.

Did Japan really feel no guilt over the past? That was the deepest fear in China's heart, that Japan truly cared nothing for him. But perhaps...perhaps he really _had_ been trying today. Perhaps he wasn't dragging up the past to hurt China. Perhaps he was trying to make amends in his own awkward way. There was still a small chance, and China clung to it now, that faint, impossible hope.

***********************************************************

Japan ached. It wasn't a physical pain that troubled him, though he was no stranger to that. The past always lurked in his mind, like a kappa lurking beneath the surface of a pond. He had spent so long trying to look away from these things, but now they bubbled up in his memory. He could no longer avoid them.

"That's it? _That's_ your apology? You come here and say that what happened at Nanking was unfortunate and regrettable, as though you had nothing to do with it. How dare you mock me like this!"

Japan's face twitched slightly at the venom in China's voice. He kept his head bowed, his eyes still on the floor. He couldn't bring himself to look up. It had been hard to enough to come here today, to talk about...about _that time_. He couldn't look up at China's face. He couldn't. Even now, he was a coward.

"You ought to be on your knees," China snapped, and Japan's knees felt a bit weak, as though they wanted to obey on their own. "You ought to weep and apologize with all your heart for everything you've done. Instead you come here and offer this halfhearted apology...you won't even admit what you did!"

"What do you want me to say?" Japan whispered, so faintly that he wasn't even sure if China had heard him. He dared to glance up, and saw some of the rage melt off China's face in a moment of confusion, but it returned just as fast.

"You should at least come clean about what you've done. In the very least, tell me that you let your men kill and rape hundreds of thousands-"

"It wasn't that many-" The words slipped out. He had told himself not argue with China this time, to just take whatever the elder had to say, but...but that was wrong, his historians had come up with very different numbers than China's had. Was China trying to make him into a monster?

"Still you try to trivialize your crime!"

"No! I'm not-" He wasn't, he was trying to apologize, but somehow it was coming out all wrong...

"You are! I know you, you love to play the victim. You expect pity for all your tragedies, but you can't even manage a simple, honest apology! Not even for _me! _You're disgusting! You...you deserved all that's happened to you! You deserved the atom bombs!"

He couldn't mean that. China couldn't possibly mean something so cruel. The room had been uncomfortably warm, but now Japan felt chilled all over. China hated him. China truly hated him.

"Get out. You're only making trouble for me." Even China's voice had turned frigid.

"China-" Japan began, trying to find the words that could fix this, that could make China understand.

"_I said get out!_"

The older country's voice broke slightly on his outburst. He was choking on his fury, too angry to even look at Japan anymore. Japan bowed once more, a gesture that China couldn't see with his back turned, and walked out the door into the blinding sunlight.

Why couldn't China understand? Didn't he realize how difficult this was for Japan? Did he think that his crimes didn't trouble him at all? Nanking haunted his dreams more than Hiroshima. The memory of the atom bombs was mostly one of physical pain, but Nanking was something different. He was terrified of what he had been. It had all made perfect sense back then, every cruelty could be so neatly justified at the time, but when he looked back on the things he had done he felt ill. The fear was always there, that whatever demon had taken hold of him would return and devour him again. It hurt, it hurt so deeply to look back at those times, at the monstrous things he did. He didn't want to remember, but the memories refused to stay hidden any longer...

_China's people were disgusting, less than human, less even than pigs. They far outnumbered Japan's soldier when they first entered the city, and yet still they huddled around their white flag and cowered, begging that their lives be spared. Their cowardice made him feel sick. _

_Prince Asaka had given the order, 'kill all captives.' Japan thought he understood what that meant, and moved forward to carry out the order. It soon became clear that 'kill all captives' meant much more than just that. It meant torturing them before letting them taste death at last. It meant making games out of killing the prisoners, and laughing as they enjoyed their 'games.' Before long, it meant turning on the civilians when there were no more soldiers left to kill. _

_His soldiers didn't always delight in the killing and torture. He saw the newer recruits, with their shaking hands and wide eyes as they ran their bayonet blades through their first kill. And then their second and their third, and something started to turn hard and cold behind their eyes then. After that they could laugh when a man started sobbing while they buried him alive, and smile while competing over who could decapitate the most people. Any limits they might have had came crashing down._

_Japan started feeling ill, but he told himself it was nothing. The nausea could easily be explained. The meat they had eaten for dinner had been undercooked; perhaps he had a case of indigestion. He hadn't been getting much sleep lately either; maybe he was feeling a little sick from being overworked. There were plenty of reasons why. Guilt didn't have to be one of them. He ignored it, and made no move to stop his men. _

Japan reached out a hand to steady himself against a wall; the memories were making him feel dizzy. He couldn't change what he had done, and pretending it had never happened was only making things worse, for himself and China. Perhaps what he had done was beyond forgiveness. Perhaps he could never repair the damage between himself and China.

Once, centuries ago, China had cared for him. Japan was sure of that. He could remember the older country guiding Japan's hands while teaching him how to write ('No, you're so sloppy! Here, you aren't holding the brush right, it's like this...no, not quite. Give it here, I'll show you. See what I did? Now you try.') He could remember sitting in China's lap at night, tracing constellations with their fingers ('Look, it's a rabbit! You like rabbits, don't you?') When had all that changed? It didn't matter; any love China had for Japan had dried up entirely. How could China forgive him? Japan could barely forgive himself. It was too much to expect that China would forgive, even in Japan did apologize as deeply and sincerely as the older nation wished.

But...but perhaps there was still some hope, some small chance that he could be forgiven. Perhaps China could come to understand how deeply Japan regretted all that he had done. There was still a small chance, and Japan clung to it now, that faint, impossible hope.

_***********************************************************_

Historical Notes:

The Rape of Nanking, which happened during the Second Sino-Japanese War, was one of the worst massacres in history. The actual massacre took place over the short period of six weeks, but a staggering number were killed, tortured and raped during that time. The exact number is a topic of much debate. Some estimates go as high as half a million, while others claim that no massacre took place at all. However, most agree that the number is somewhere between 200,000 and 400,000.

What went on during the Rape of Nanking is hard to imagine, so much so that many Westerners didn't believe the stories they heard from Nanking when the news started to leak out; it just sounded too horrific to be real. People were gunned down at random, rounded up and used for bayonet practice and other killing games, doused in gasoline and lit on fire, buried alive, torn apart by German shepherds...and those are only a few examples. There was a horrific amount of creativity when it came to the ways the soldiers would torture their victims. But it was the women who were most unfortunate. It's estimated that between 20,000 and 80,000 women were raped. Women of all ages and walks of life were targets: old women, little girls, rich, poor, even nuns were raped. While rape is terrible enough on it's own, the soldiers often found ways to torture them even further. There are many accounts of Japanese soldiers forcing men to rape their daughters, sisters and mothers, often in front of the rest of the family. Any who resisted were killed on the spot.

Things might have gotten even worse if it were not for John Rabe and the other members of the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone. They were only a few dozen Western men and women (mostly American, but some were also German, British and Dutch, and a few Chinese and Russian too) who worked to create and maintain the Nanking Safety Zone and keep the refugees inside safe. John Rabe, a German, was elected the leader of the committee, in part because he was a high ranking member of the Nazi party (the Japanese were surprisingly quick to back off after Rabe would show them his badge.) It's estimated that the actions of Rabe and the rest of the committee saved 200,000-250,000 lives (Rabe is sometimes called China's Oskar Schindler.) Rabe sent letters to Hitler, asking for help, but the letters never reached him, and Rabe was arrested after he returned to Germany. He was later released, but forbidden to write or lecture about what he saw in Nanking. Dr. Robert Wilson was, like Rabe, another member of the committee and unsung hero of the massacre. He was the only surgeon in the city during that time, and worked tirelessly with the endless supply of wounded and sick refugees.

Japan has, in general, done a really poor job at apologizing for the war crimes during WWII and the Second Sino-Japanese War. For a long time, most of the atrocities were ignored or flat out denied, and were certainly not taught to children in schools. There has also been the tendency for the Japanese to portray themselves as the victims of WWII, which just further lends to that feeling that they have nothing to apologize for. There have been some attempts to apologize, but most have been just expressing remorse and not really owning up to what happened (which is what many in China want. I once read an article by a Chinese man who was so angry about Japan's half assed apology that he even said that Japan deserved getting nuked. Very harsh words indeed.) In recent decades, however, things have been changing. War criminals have been coming forward on their own to confess their crimes and bring awareness to what happened in the past, information about the Rape of Nanking, Unit 731 and so forth have started to appear in school textbooks and there are groups pushing for the government to officially apologize. Hasn't happened yet, but they seem to be moving in that direction. It's very difficult for both sides, though. Aside from the arguments about how many died and what exactly happened, there are other factors that complicate things. So far, the only apologies the Japanese government had made have been just basically saying that what happened was unfortunate, without really admitting guilt. Many in China want the Japanese to admit their wrongdoing straight up, but since that would kind of destroy the widespread belief that the Japanese were the victims, there are many in Japan that don't want to do that (some worry that it would 'hurt Japanese pride.') It's just....such an ugly, sticky mess for everyone. But I do hope that the Japanese government apologies while the survivors of Nanking are still alive.

...so, um...hope this didn't offend anyone. I tried to be sensitive about it, but it's a hard topic.


End file.
